My Sun Oven from, you guessed it, my dad! Thanks Dad!

My dad eats mostly whole foods.  Sometimes he puts them in a blender.  He can make smoothies that way, and if he leaves them in long enough, it'll heat up with the friction and will become soup.  I don't think he cooks much though.  He's the healthiest most will-powerful man I know.  He wishes that his kids could be as healthy as he, I'm sure.  For Christmas, he got us this crazy sun oven.  It uses only solar power.  It has reflectors for cooler or more overcast days.  Basically, it cooks much like a slow cooker.  It's kind of funny, b/c not only do I need to adapt to cooking in this thing, I need to adapt to cooking in general :). 

So my first recipie was a frozen bag that read something like "just put in a pan and bake."  Steven said he would order a pizza. 

My dad got me a thermometer, and sure enough, it gets hot in there!  It's a lot like my "sun catcher" science experiment from when I lived in Oklahoma and was home schooled.  We entered a science fair, and I charted the temperatures of different containers of water inside a box similarly shaped with saran wrap over the front.  My dad didn't seem to remember it, but I do - that was a lot of charting and work!

Do you see the steam?!  Time to add the frozen shreaded cheese!

It melted after a little bit, then we ate it all up!  Yummy!

A month later, I decided to cook again, and used the sun oven.  I was feeling ambitious on a Wednesday, and made this recipie from scratch (from the back of the ziti box except for a substitution for yucky ricotta cheese and the whole thing of curry powder remnants from what I didn't scoop out when Isaac dumped the whole thing in one pot).  Usually we don't get a hot dinner b/c I'm on the road with my boys driving our friends to Hebrew School.  Instead, after loading up my kids, I grabbed one of the pots with oven mits and put it in the car.  It smelled sooooo good on that cold day! 

After dropping Brent off, we had a little picnic in the park.  It was still hot, they had to blow on it.  The day was still to cold for us, so we took a picture, then loaded back up in the car for the rest of it and ate from our car seats. 

I had left the other pot still in the sun oven, still in the sun for when Steven came home from work and it was still warm although the shade had taken over the back yard.  No electricity, and a hot home made meal on a Wednesday!  I was proud of myself.  Tell me, would you make the trip to the back yard for that?  I'm still wondering if I should take the time to cook.  I haven't seen gathering healthy ingredients to be as cost effective as people say it is.  Dylan kept telling me how much he liked it, and Isaac ate a lot.